Once Upon a River Page 0,32

missing girl. Sixteen was the legal age for dropping out of school in Michigan—maybe sixteen was also the age when folks stopped worrying about you. Margo had a feeling that Cal and Joanna didn’t really want to find her.

During those cold months, Margo worked on leading, shooting just in front of running rabbits and squirrels. She also shot, plucked, and cooked the occasional nonmigrating duck, from among the half-domestic oddities that appeared on the river. Brian worked odd jobs in town for cash, especially snowplowing, for which he used a four-wheel-drive truck he kept somewhere in town. He and Paul owned a stand of woods south of Heart of Pines, and so he cut trees, split logs with a hydraulic splitter, and delivered cords of firewood around the county. He also was able to fix cars, but he hated to do it in winter unless he could use somebody’s heated garage. Once a week or so, he visited his kids in town, one of whom was just three years younger than Margo, he said, which meant the boy was only one year younger, really. He invited Margo along on some trips, but she did not want to risk encountering the police or the Murrays. At first Brian had seemed uneasy about leaving her alone, but he soon took for granted that when he returned, she would be there. He said he felt like a better man knowing she was waiting for him at the end of a day of digging trenches or cutting down trees. She was his salvation, he said, his reason to settle down and mend his ways. Sometimes, when he said this sort of thing, his grin took on a ferocity that scared Margo.

The letter that came in March was in a yellow envelope. The paper folded inside featured cartoon bumblebees. After reading it a few times, Margo noticed it smelled like flowers and honey. There was no return address on the envelope. Folded inside the paper was a postal money order for two hundred dollars. The letter read:

Dear Margaret Louise,

Thank you for writing to me, Sweetheart. I’m glad to hear you are fine and still living on the river. I know you always loved the river. I could not endure that mildew and smell. Though it breaks my heart, I cannot encourage you to visit me at this time. My situation is delicate. I will write to you soon and arrange to meet with you.

Love, Your Mama

p.s. Don’t tell your daddy

or Cal you heard from me.

Margo couldn’t speak at all that evening, but she nodded in agreement with Brian when it made sense to do so, and she fell asleep early. The following day, when Brian went to work, Margo loaded up his twelve-gauge and went into the woods dragging the heavy-duty sled Brian used for firewood. Though it was not deer hunting season, she tromped downstream through the snow until she found a deer trail cutting to the river. She sat against the trunk of an oak tree and waited. A few hours later, the first deer to follow the path down to the water was a doe, and a second doe followed, her belly swollen. Margo watched them drink at the river and then jump back up the bank and nuzzle the snow for buried acorns before continuing on. She watched them chew disinterestedly on saplings, and finally they wandered away, still unaware of her presence. A little after noon, a bigger deer, surely a buck that had dropped its antlers, went down to the water to drink. Margo focused on the muscle movement in the deer’s shoulders and neck, the twitching of the ears and the tail. She pushed thoughts of her mother into the quietest place within herself, until she was inside the sound of leaves rustling and the wind-sound of the moving surface of the river. The deer jumped back up onto the bank, and Margo calmly followed its motion. When it stopped and nuzzled the ground, she aimed into the heart and lungs and pressed the trigger.

The deer fell hard. When Margo went to the animal, she found that she had shot the slug into a doe. From its musculature, she had been certain it was a buck, but now she could see its sex and its slightly swollen belly. Though her aim had been perfect, the doe was not dead. It attempted to lift its head, watched Margo, terrified, through a big, clear eye. The creature kicked with its